Prime Minister Narendra Modi showered praise on shuttler Pramod Bhagat after he became the first badminton player from India to win a gold medal at the Olympics or Paralympic Games, beating Great Britain's Daniel Bathell 2-0 in the Men's Singles SL3 final at the Tokyo Paralympic Games on Saturday.
PM Modi on Twitter wrote, "Pramod Bhagat has won the hearts of the entire nation. He is a Champion, whose success will motivate millions. He showed remarkable resilience & determination. Congratulations to him for winning the Gold in Badminton. Best wishes to him for his future endeavours."
Apart from PM Modi, President of Paralympic Committee of India, Deepa Malik too congratulated Pramod for his amazing feat at paralympics.
"Heartiest congratulations to Pramod Bhagat and Manoj Sarkar. We have won four gold medals so far. They (Pramod and Manoj) played straight sets and did not drop a single set. Many congratulations to their coaches," she was quoted as saying by the news agency ANI.
On Saturday, he had reached the final by beating Japan's Fujihara Daisuke in straight games.
Now, Bhagat and his partner Palak Kohli will square off against Japanese pair of Daisuke Fujihara and Akiko Sugino in the bronze medal play off on Sunday.
Bhagat, the 33-year-old from Bhubaneswar who contracted polio at age four, defeated the Briton 21-14, 21-17, coming back from 4-9 deficit in the second game to claim his first gold medal as badminton made its Paralympic Games debut at Tokyo. The top-ranked player in the world, is the reigning World Champion in SL3 class having won the title by beating Bathell in the final in Basel, Switzerland in 2019.
